Plight of poll workers during COVID-19 pandemic topic of MSU faculty member’s newest article

by Sam Kealhofer, Intern on the A&S Research Support Team

Exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic is shifting poll worker demographics and what the shift means for election day is the topic of Mississippi State Political Science and Public Administration Assistant Professor Thessalia Merivaki’s recent article in The Conversation, “Poll workers on Election Day will be younger – and probably more diverse – due to COVID-19.”

Merivaki said, “Many of the nation’s poll workers are reluctant to work during the pandemic because they are, overwhelmingly, older and at high risk of severe COVID-19 infection,” leading officials to recruit younger volunteers to staff the country’s roughly 230,000 polling sites this November.

Although the new poll workers generally will be less experienced and less familiar with the election process, they are typically more tech savvy. In addition, having younger and more diverse poll workers should boost voter confidence in first-time voters and minority voters, demographics that are more likely to feel or be politically excluded. 

Merivaki says that poll workers are the “gatekeepers of democracy” and can influence the voting process in many other ways.

Citing her previous research, Merivaki explains that poll workers have great discretion to verify eligibility, offer provisional ballots and can even “invalidate a person’s vote if they determine that the signature on their mail-in or absentee ballot does not match the one on their voter registration record.”

Her 2018 paper co-authored with Daniel A. Smith of the University of Florida entitled “A Failsafe for Voters? Cast and Rejected Provisional Ballots in North Carolina” finds that voter registration challenges increase the risk of voting provisionally and disproportionately affect minority voters, leading the researchers to question whether these voters are treated equally under the law. Merivaki’s paper received the Midwest Political Science Association’s 2018 Best Paper by an Emerging Scholar Award and was published in Political Research Quarterly.

In her newly published book, “The Administration of Voter Registration: Expanding the Electorate Across and Within States,” Merivaki demonstrates that the process of registering to vote is complex, especially in states that have not adopted Online Voter Registration, like Mississippi and Texas. More challenges increase the risk of having one’s registration application invalidated, resulting in the possibility of not being able to cast a valid vote on election day.

For these reasons, Merivaki calls poll workers the “human dimension of an election.” As everyone has biases, those who staff the polling sites implicitly determine which biases are or are not in effect in those spaces, she said.

Merivaki’s years of research into election reforms, election administration, voter education as well as election data transparency and accessibility remains pertinent in the 2020 presidential election year fraught with voter security concerns and the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an effort to contribute solutions to the various challenges facing the nation, as well as insight into other points of interest, the College of Arts and Sciences will continue to highlight faculty research in our “Research in the Headlines” series each Monday and Wednesday. For more research in the headlines, visit https://www.cas.msstate.edu/research/researchintheheadlines/; and for information about the College of Arts and Sciences or the Department of Political Science and Public Administration visit https://www.cas.msstate.edu/ or https://www.pspa.msstate.edu/.